


the salt of the earth

by irishais



Category: Final Fantasy VIII
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-04 20:12:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20476820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irishais/pseuds/irishais
Summary: Garden plants a garden. Seifer has no idea why he's been recruited for this. Seifer, Xu.





	the salt of the earth

It’s hot. 

Sweat drips down his spine, pooling at the back of his navy t-shirt. Seifer glares at the plants, potted into plastic trays, all lined up in neat rows next to him, then directs his ire toward the seemingly endless expanse of dirt that’s taking over a solid quarter of the Quad. 

How had he gotten roped into this in the first place? He’s never done anything like this before. 

“You’re doing it wrong.” 

Xu’s voice comes from somewhere behind him, but the cold that suddenly drips on the nape of his neck startles him more than she does. Seifer shoves the seedling in his hand into the little hole he’s dug up, and turns to glare at her. 

“What the fuck was that for?” he snaps. “And I bet you can’t do any better.” 

“Grow up, Almasy.” She holds out a plastic bottle of water to him, still icy from the cooler she’s undoubtedly plucked it from across the way, where some of the SeeDs are overseeing the project, making sure no one dies from heat exhaustion. 

God, isn’t it supposed to be _ spring_? It feels like a thousand degrees, and for someone who runs hotter than average, that's _saying _something. 

He presses the bottle against his throat, his forehead, soaking in the moisture before it can evaporate. Xu kneels in the dirt next to him, heedless of the mess it will make. He supposes after nearly ten years of killing people for profit, a little dirt doesn’t bother her. 

She picks up the little plant he hasn’t bothered to cover the roots of yet, and gently works at the soil around the base, loosening it up before putting it back in the hole. 

“You have to make sure the roots aren’t tight, otherwise they’ll never take to the ground, and all of this will have been for nothing. Pass me the trowel.” 

He does, still scowling, even as he watches her turn up the pile of soil next to the hole, filling the spaces, patting it down lightly, before she turns the trowel in her hand, offering it back to him handle-first, like it’s one of her many knives. 

Seifer takes it, before she reconsiders her offer and stabs him with it. 

“Dig a deeper hole for the next one-- we don’t want all the plants coming up during the next rainstorm.” 

Arrogant, bossy, _ know-it-all_. She’s like Quistis, but she’s meaner, and she’d likely slit his throat with a garden implement if he disagrees. He decides to dig, instead. 

“How the hell do you know all this, anyway?”

Xu shrugs, and sips from her own water bottle. “I was on the beautification committee in middle school. Esthar’s educational program was big on self-sustainability.” 

He snorts, and thinks it might be inappropriate, but that’s never stopped Seifer before. “Never took you for the schoolgirl type-- thought you just popped out of Kramer’s temple, fully-formed as a murderous psycho.” 

“We can’t all win the genetic lottery,” Xu retorts, a glint in her eye as she turns her gaze sidelong at him, a silent reminder of the very short leash he’s on. Crass remarks at the expense of his adoptive father will not get him anywhere in her book. “Stop, you’re digging too wide. We only have so much ground to work with, here.” 

He chucks the trowel, picks up a plant, tries to remember how she pulled apart the packed soil and roots without tearing the whole thing in half, and hands it to her before he kills it. 

“I don’t get why we’re not doing this _ outside_,” he complains. “There’s all that space by the airfield.” 

“It wouldn’t do us any good to plant a garden and then _ leave it behind _every time we take flight, would it?” 

She doesn’t need to call him a moron; her words drip with her sentiments regarding Seifer Almasy. Hearing them out loud would just be superfluous at this point. 

“Yeah, yeah.” 

Not that he wants to be on board the next time it takes off, but he’s still trying to figure out how to get out of that one. Coming _ back _to Garden had never been in the cards after he defected; he supposes Leonhart thinks he’s doing Seifer a favor, allowing him back in their ranks as part of his parole. 

He covers the base of the plant with a few scoops of soil, and moves to the next hole-- if Xu actually wants to _ work _with him, that’s no skin off his nose. Besides, if she riles him up, he remembers his mother telling him that blood is good for fertilizer--

_ \--be careful, there you go! that’s a good job you did. how about we plant these tomatoes next? _

_ her smile wide and bright like the sun and sea at their back as they knelt in the garden; seifer’s small hands scooping up a wriggling little worm before it could disappear back into the dirt, laughter and warm spring days-- _

“Hey. Almasy. _ Hey._” 

Distantly, he hears Xu snapping her fingers near his ear. She looks _ concerned_, and he sees one of the medic staffers in their white shirts already taking a few steps in their direction. He shakes off the memory, the flashback that tried to drag him down with deep roots, and shoves the trowel in the earth. 

“Are you...?” 

“_What _ ?” he snaps back, before she can finish asking him the question he doesn’t want to _ hear _. Sunlight flashes on the steel flat of the trowel, like the glint on a gunblade's keen edge. “I’m digging, I’m _digging_.”


End file.
